


Snow like Ashes

by Rabenherz



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Bisexual Disaster Harry Du Bois, During Canon, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sexuality Crisis, Smoking, but aren't we all a little bit in love with kim kitsuragi?, harry just has a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25269301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabenherz/pseuds/Rabenherz
Summary: Something within you coils like a spring ready to snap, threatening to send you running into the night like the damn coward you are. Sounds like something you’d do, doesn’t it? Fucking chicken. Last time you ran cawing so hard you left yourself behind.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi, Harry Du Bois/Smoker on the Balcony
Comments: 11
Kudos: 66





	Snow like Ashes

The pack of Astras is a heavy weight in your pocket, an omnipresent thing that calls and whispers, temptingly knocking against your fingers alongside keys and chewing gum.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. A cheap offer of peace for the little gremlin.

Kim wouldn’t have liked it one bit, and you knew it. That is why you wished him goodnight early and went out to the yard by yourself, thinking that not telling him barely counts as a lie at all. It’s just a little thing, just a small something to be ashamed of on top of all the bigger things people say you’ve done.

One stick of tobacco won’t make a difference to a boy used to speed and liquor.

Just a little thing, you know? Not much harm done.

At least you’ll remember this.

But that is the trouble: you only gave Cuno one. Now you’ve got a pocket full of smokes.

That, too, should be a little thing.

But you are starting to know yourself better than you’d like, bits and pieces falling into place as though you were just another mystery to solve. Once you start, you might not stop. If you allow yourself this, who is to say that tomorrow a line or two of coke won’t feel like a small transgression?

Kim told you that you must have been one hell of a cop, before.

You quicken your steps, freshly fallen snow crunching beneath your soles as you walk loops around Martinaise in a futile attempt to clear your head. Trying not to let yourself be swept away on a tidal wave of panic about all these little things, that come together like a collective of raindrops forming into a monsoon.

Smokes in your pockets and pills in a cabinet. Gum wrappers and postcards.

 _Fuck it_ , you think, stopping abruptly in the middle of the empty street. You fumble the pack from your pocket and pluck at the cap with chill stiff fingers.

March? It seems this winter will never end. This cold is all you have ever known.

It takes you three tries to strike a match, your curses visible in the icy air. Finally, you light up, bringing the filter to your lips, filling lungs with heady warmth; a subdued kind of fire, that is as familiar as most everything else is not.

You savour the feeling, just you and the burn and the quiet whispers of guilt, growing ever fainter.

You do not know what makes you look up at that moment, be it sound or movement or one of these strange premonitions you sometimes get, but there he is, leaning against the rail of the balcony. He has his back to you, his slight frame a silhouette against the light from the open door. You cannot see his face but can picture the way the smoke curls out of the corners of his mouth in wisps.

The image of a smoker on a balcony echoes one from another night, when you discovered a ghost of a whisper of a something you did not know about yourself.

Your cigarette burns itself out, dangling forgotten from your fingertips, yellowed and worn from a prior life.

You do not breathe; for a moment you think you might have forgotten how.

Around you the snow continues to fall, collecting on your shoulders and shoes in faint layers. You wonder, the thought bubbling to the surface with a strange sense of mania, if he is not cold, and you imagine the hair on his exposed forearms standing on end in the frigid air.

Eventually he turns to stub out his cigarette against the edge of the balcony, and he catches you still standing motionless in the street with your lips slightly parted. His head tilts slightly, quizzical, and it hits the bottom of your stomach like a ball of lead.

 _Oh_ , you think. _Oh fuck._

Something within you coils like a spring ready to snap, threatening to send you running into the night like the damn coward you are. Sounds like something you’d do, doesn’t it? Fucking chicken. Last time you ran so hard you left yourself behind.

But that’s the point, isn’t it?

You raise your hand in a goofy little wave, praying he doesn’t see your Adam’s apple gulp all the way down to your unshaved neck.

Kim smiles slightly and waves back.

“Are you coming up, Detective? You look positively frozen.”

You find yourself nodding.

“Just a moment.”

You enter the Whirling In Rags, feeling deep how the cold has soaked into your bones, your steps heavy on the way to the stairs. The snow melting from your snakeskin shoes leaves a trail of puddles across the floor. You ignore Garte’s dirty look, your ears rushing with the white noise of rising blood.

Kim meets you on the landing. He looks as impeccably impassive as ever, even half ready for bed without his gloves or bomber jacket. Your eyes are drawn to his forearms, to his wrists.

Your brain latches on to people and impressions seemingly at random. Ever since you came back to life, the dark cloud of a might have been looms over you. And yet, the first thing you did was to make that, frankly, regrettable pass at Klaasje, followed by an afternoon obsessing about the smell of the boy in the purple shirt.

And now, here you are.

When you eventually meet his gaze you are certain that he can see the questions written plainly on your face, and it occurs to you that Kim Kitsuragi really is as patient as the seasons. Of course he can tell that something is on your mind, he always can, but like with the car (or, something within you whispers helpfully, like with the stranger on the balcony) he wants to give you the opportunity to order your thoughts by yourself first.

It is, both incredibly kind and incredibly unhelpful. Even in the whirls of your frustrated confusion you cannot bring yourself to think of him as cruel. For what you are, and for what you have been, he follows you anyway.

“Detective.”

The barest hint of a furrowed brow betrays his concern. Perhaps he wonders what agitates you so, about whatever you saw out in the snow and what it could mean, that he might find you passed out in a puddle of booze, piss and vomit come the morning.

Your mouth is dry. It feels as though you haven’t had a drink in years. Deserts and snowfall; unsurprisingly, your world is one of extremes.

“Hey.” On impulse, you fish the nearly full pack of Astras out of your coat pocket, offering them to him with a steady hand and a shaky mind. “Went out to get some fa-”

Some part of you pulls the emergency break, and you choke on the word before it quite makes it past your lips. Kim’s expression does not change at all, and while you are half sure that you are overthinking this, you make a mental note to establish at some later point if there are inappropriate ways to talk about cigarettes.

“-but on second thought I don’t think I should have them. It’s probably stupid, but I’m kinda seeing myself tumbling down some kind of weird slippery slope right back to party town.”

Kim's lips twitch, not quite a smile but close enough that it may as well be one.

“That is probably wise, then.” He takes the offered packet, and his fingers are so warm.

“Thank you, Detective.”

They will last him the rest of the week, if not longer. One a day; you cannot imagine that you ever had that kind of discipline.

“Eh, don’t mention it,” you say, running your fingers through your hair, purely because they still tingle with the ghost of a touch. You will try and fail not to think about that for the rest of the evening. “I figure we’re helping each other out.”

The lieutenant smiles, a real one, warm and weary with the weight of the week you’ve endured so far.

“I suppose that is fair,” he says, and then hesitates, searching your face. “Would you like to join me for a cup of tea? You were out in the cold for quite a while.”

“Nah,” you say, like the idiot you are. “I’m good. Quite fancy an early night.”

Besides, you’ll need some space to think, and with the way you are right now you cannot promise yourself that you won’t spend the entire time staring at his hands cradling a mug.

Kim nods.

“Well then. Goodnight again, detective. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“‘Night, Kim,” you say, leaving him in the hallway.

The hostel room door closes behind you. You are in darkness.

You lean your forehead against the wood, and your fingers continue to tingle, alive, with that touch. An arctic wind from the broken window whispers against the back of your neck like an unwanted caress.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my friends D&S, who are indulging me and my Disco Elysium related feelings most terribly. 
> 
> As usual, thanks to BannedBloodOranges for beating this into readable shape.


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